Starting over-a

Eight months.

More than eight months of waking up every morning in a tiny apartment above a bakery and convincing myself that life hurt a little less than it did the day before.

Most days, it actually did.

Millhaven slowly became familiar to me in the quietest ways.

The bakery downstairs opened before sunrise, filling the building with the warm scent of fresh bread every morning. The diner opened at six sharp. The library on Main Street locked its doors every evening at exactly five, and Mrs. Okafor, the librarian, always carried a sunflower bookmark inside whichever romance novel she was currently reading.

The pigeons near the town square were fearless little thieves.

And the gas station at the north end of town sold surprisingly good coffee from a machine that looked older than I was.

Small things.

Ordinary things.

Human things.

Nothing like the life I left behind.

No pack politics. No Alpha titles. No mate bonds hanging painfully inside my chest.

Just simple routines.

I clung to those routines harder than I ever admitted.

My mornings started before dawn.

Actually, they started whenever Lena decided sleep was no longer necessary—which was usually before six in the morning.

Without fail.

Her tiny warning noises would rise steadily from the crib beside my bed until I finally gave in and picked her up before she woke the entire building.

“Good morning to you too,” I would mumble sleepily as I lifted her into my arms. “You are ridiculously loud for someone this tiny.”

Lena would immediately grab my shirt with surprising strength, which I chose to believe was her way of arguing back.

Every morning followed the same pattern.

Diaper.

Bottle.

Rocking chair beside the east-facing window.

I would sit there half-awake while pale sunlight slowly spread across the rooftops of Millhaven, warming the quiet streets below. Lena would rest against my chest, calm and sleepy after feeding, while the smell of bread drifted upstairs from the bakery below.

Those moments became my favorite part of the day.

Because during those quiet mornings, the emptiness inside me softened.

Not completely.

The hollow left behind by the broken mate bond never truly disappeared. Some mornings I still woke with my hand pressed against my chest, searching in my sleep for something that no longer existed.

But Lena made the pain quieter.

Just by being there.

By breathing softly against me.

By needing me.

I didn’t think babies understood the ways they healed people simply by existing, but somehow she healed me anyway.

Little by little.

Enough to keep going.

Enough to survive another day.

“You’re late.”

Donna didn’t even look up from the pie crust she was shaping when I pushed through the diner’s back door.

“I’m two minutes late,” I argued, balancing Lena’s basket on one arm while tying my apron with the other.

“In this diner, two minutes counts.”

Then she finally glanced up.

The second she saw Lena, her entire expression softened instantly.

It happened every single time.

“How’d she sleep?”

“Four straight hours,” I answered proudly while setting the basket in its usual spot near the register. “I think we just broke a world record.”

Donna snorted.

“When my son was a baby, he didn’t sleep four hours straight until he was almost two years old.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“That’s motherhood.”

Before I could answer, she slid a plate toward me across the counter.

Eggs. Toast. Bacon.

Way more food than I usually ate.

“Donna, I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t.” She pointed toward the plate. “I said eat.”

That was Donna’s way.

She never forced comfort onto people. She simply placed it in front of them and waited until they accepted it.

Food.

Coffee.

Quiet kindness.

I had loved her for that since my first week in Millhaven.

The diner filled quickly once morning started properly.

Truck drivers arrived first, exhausted and silent, wanting coffee strong enough to wake the dead.

Then came the regulars.

Mr. Petrov always claimed the oatmeal was too thick while finishing every bite anyway.

The two women from the insurance office split every bill exactly in half and had apparently been doing so for over a decade.

And every Tuesday and Thursday, a young mother came in carrying twin toddlers and wearing the same exhausted but determined expression I saw in my own reflection every morning.

I liked these people.

Their lives were ordinary in the best possible way.

No hidden agendas.

No power struggles.

No expectations.

They only wanted warm meals, hot coffee, and someone to smile when placing the plate in front of them.

And for the first time in my life, that simplicity felt safe.

I moved easily through the rush now, carrying plates and refilling coffee cups almost automatically.

Somewhere along the way, this place had stopped feeling temporary.

It had started feeling like home.

Between breakfast and lunch, the diner always grew quiet for a little while.

Donna cleaned the counters while soft music played from the old radio near the kitchen doors. Lena usually slept in her basket beside the register, wrapped tightly in her favorite yellow blanket.

Those quiet moments became my time to breathe.

Sometimes I helped Donna organize invoices and supply orders.

Other times, I sat near Lena with a notebook open in front of me, writing letters to Mila.

Long letters.

Careful letters.

I filled them with stories about Millhaven, about Donna, about Lena learning how to laugh.

But there were still certain things I never wrote down.

Some wounds were easier to survive when left unnamed.